Rumors swirled this week that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was secretly flown to Russia for life-saving surgery.
The Iranian ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, told Russian News Agency TASS on Tuesday that those reports are nonsense, comparing them to previous false reports about the ayatollah’s father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei.
“Until the day of U.S. and Zionist aggression against Iran, on the morning of the most revered holy month, news of the martyr Khamenei’s escape to Venezuela and Russia dominated the media of the satanic movement,” wrote Jalali. “Now, reports that the supreme leader has been transferred to Russia for medical treatment represent a new form of psychological warfare.”
The Iranian ambassador rebuked the notion that the supreme leader would attempt to escape his own country, declaring that “Iranian leaders do not need to flee or hide in bunkers” amid the U.S.-Israeli strikes.
“[Their] place is in the streets among the people,” Jalali added. “The blood of the martyr [Ali] Khamenei nullifies the effects of psychological warfare and the flood of lies.”
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The impassioned statement would be more convincing if anyone had actually seen the current ayatollah since his reported ascension.
The younger Khamenei, who Iranian officials have acknowledged was injured in a previous strike against Tehran, has not appeared in public or even on camera since Operation Epic Fury began.
He offered his first address as the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic last week, but the text of the speech was delivered by an Iranian newscaster on state television.
Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida claimed over the weekend that the ayatollah had been flown out of Iran for treatment in Moscow. The alleged escape was reportedly made at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin previously declined to comment on the Al Jarida report.
President Donald Trump added fuel to the speculation on Monday when he told reporters the U.S. government isn’t even sure who is running the country at this point.
“We don’t know who their leader is. We have people wanting to negotiate. We have no idea who they are,” the president said, adding that “nobody’s seen [Mojtaba Khamenei]” and claiming intelligence doesn’t know “if he’s dead or not.”
“They’re saying that he lost his leg, one leg, and he’s been hurt very badly. Other people are saying he’s dead. Nobody’s saying he’s 100% healthy,” Trump said.
If Iranian leaders felt that they didn’t need to “hide in bunkers,” that sentiment might have changed following the reported assassination of Iran’s top national security official, Ali Larijani.
The Iranian National Security Council secretary was assassinated overnight via an air strike by the Israeli military. Considered one of the late ayatollah’s closest confidants, Larijani is the highest-ranking Iranian official to be killed since the opening strikes of Operation Epic Fury.
Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Basij unit, was reportedly killed in a separate strike.
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“Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated overnight and joined the head of the annihilation program, Khamenei, and all the eliminated members of the axis of evil, in the depths of hell,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s office told the Times of Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted to social media a photo of himself ordering the killing of Larijani and Soleimani.
